Distance: 2 miles (8 x 400 meters)
Pace: 6:58 (oops)
Wine: 1 glass of zinfandel
A perfectly normal day at the office. I'm checking my calendar for anything due in the next week and I see it: "speed work, 8 x 400 m." Oh, crap. My first official training workout is scheduled for Friday. Frick! It's about to get real. Only husband #1 is out of town all weekend for a hockey tournament, so I should try to move it to Thursday when I don't have to bring the girls. No dice. Husband #1 has a training appointment that night (he's rehabbing after some injuries, with my trainer Pinch Your Butt, so I am loathe to interfere with that). He does not get home until well after dark and none of the local tracks turn their lights on at night. So, Friday then. I plan to squeeze speed work in before daughter #1's soccer practice at 5:30 that evening. It's gonna be tight. But really, how long could it take me to run 400 meters 8 times? I google 400 meters and learn it is a quarter of a mile. That means I have to run 2 miles. That is a lot longer than I thought it was. I need to learn metric.
I pick the girls up early-ish and head home. I am all business in the car, instructing daughter #1 that she is to immediately change in to soccer clothes and report to the car. Daughter #2, who is recently potty-trained (sort of) is on bathroom duty. She must go "try" and then report to the car. I am scary, so they are ready by 4:15. Instead of driving to a track, I drive to the local elementary school, which has a gigantic soccer field and baseball filed surrounded by a dirt path. I set my children roughly in the middle of it with an iPad and a soccer ball as well as strict instructions not to venture off. I prepare to run (literally) circles around them. According to my training plan, 400 m sprints should be 55 seconds to a minute faster than my 10K pace. My fastest 10K was a roughly 8:35 pace, but I'm faster now. So I use 8:30 as my 10K pace and shoot for a 7:30 pace. Because I am not on a traditional track, I set MapMyRun for kilometers so I can see how far 400 meters is. I remind my daughters again not to leave the soccer field and start running a large loop around them so I can keep them in sight. I immediately realize the problem. While it is super helpful for MapMyRun to tell me how far I've gone in kilometers, I should have realized it would also pace me in kilometers. I don't know what 7:30/mile is in metric. So I run my 400 meters, just to mark how far it is. I ran it in 1:42, but I have no idea what that means (I have since learned it is a 6:54 pace).
I turn the app back to good old miles so I can track my pace. I run my second leg. 6:15 pace. Too fast. Still, I recover quickly with a 10 meter walk. I go again. 6:22. Crap! I evidently can't pace myself. I ran the next three in 7:14, 7:08, and 7:00, respectively. Still not on pace, but at least I'm over 7:00. Then I hear "mom, I have to go potty." It's the older daughter, so it's not an emergency. But I still think, "well, I've done 6, that's almost 8, that's probably good enough." Really? Am I going to cheat on my very first official training workout? I snap (a little harsher than I should have) "you can hold it!" and set off for my last two repeats. 7:10 and 7:27, so still faster than I should have. But here's the thing, I recovered quickly and they did not feel that difficult. Maybe I need to rethink my 10K time. In any event, we were able to go back to the house so daughter #1 could use the restroom and still make it to soccer practice at 5:30 (where daughter #2 promptly had a potty accident that required a second trip home to change). And I am officially in marathon training!
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